


Match Your Weakness With A Name

by leyley09



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Spin the Bottle, background Michael Latta/Tom Wilson - Freeform, other background ships if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-07 10:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12230805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leyley09/pseuds/leyley09
Summary: In which Braden gets talked into playing spin-the-bottle with his teammates and - surprisingly - doesn't live to regret it





	Match Your Weakness With A Name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [screamlet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamlet/gifts).



> screamlet, I was pretty excited to find I'd be writing for you. I loved so many of your prompts and ideas, but I went with Burkie/Holts because it would be a new challenge for me. I started 3 separate fics, and this is the one that made it all the way. (I really like the other two, so you'll probably see those eventually.)
> 
> I do hope you enjoy this! It's been delightful to write. :D
> 
> Set in a, let's call it adjacent universe, during the miniscule amount of time in which both Brooks Laich and Mike Richards were on the roster (because I wanted it that way okay).
> 
>  
> 
> Title from "Gloom Boys" by Waterparks

“You have got to be kidding me. No. There is no way I’m doing this.”

“Oh come on, Holts, what else are you going to do in this blizzard? This hotel isn’t exactly overflowing with activities for the snowbound.”

Braden rolls his eyes at Carly. “I don’t know, I was thinking sleeping sounded good, I brought a book with me, there’s 400 channels available - one of them has to be playing something more interesting than spin-the-bottle with you assholes.”

“That hurts, Holts,” TJ says, slinging an arm around his shoulders. “Are you saying you don’t want to kiss any of these sexy motherfuckers?”

“Shut up, Osh.”

“C’mon, babe, it’s totally ‘no homo’ in here right now.” The three of them simultaneously glance across the room at Willy and Latts sharing an armchair which was clearly made for one person. “Okay, so maybe it’s a little homo in here.” 

Braden glares at him. “Don’t make ‘homo’ jokes, TJ. Not cool.”

“Sorry, Holts, you know I don’t mean it like that. Anyway, it’s just for fun, babe, totally chill. It’s like...team bonding or something.”

Carly pokes him. “Look, even Backy’s gonna play. It can’t be that bad.” 

“Oh for fuck’s sake, FINE.”

Before he can change his mind, Carly drags him across the relatively empty meeting room to where a surprising number of his teammates are gathering together in a rough circle. Backy and Ovi end up almost directly across from him, with the other Swedes and Russians lined up to either side like a bridal party. To the left of the Swedes, Latts is pretending like he and Willy have anything like personal space left (Braden gives it 10 minutes or 2 spins before even that token effort disappears). Brooks is next to them, then Beags and TJ. Alzy squeezes his way in between TJ and Carly. 

“Shit, I haven’t done this since college,” Schmidty says with his usual toothy grin as he forces his way in between Braden and Grubi.

“And that was so long ago,” Grubi replies, with a deadpan nearly as good as Backy’s.

“It really was,” Schmidty nods, oblivious to the sarcasm.

On Grubi’s other side, Richie appears to be letting the baby Russians talk him into something that could be either pre-game shots or some kind of sordid bet. Or both.

“Okay, okay, for everyone who hasn’t done this before or in a while, the rules!” 

TJ is having way too much fun emceeing this ‘event’.

“We’ll start with the oldest, so Mr. Laich over here will go first. When it is your turn, you will spin this bottle like so--” 

Braden doesn’t even want to know where the empty bottle of Cherry Grey Goose came from, but he has a good guess.

“-- and you kiss whoever the bottle is pointing at. Because this isn’t middle school, I will not require anything special about the kiss itself, but if you go for the cheek, you’re a wuss and will be chirped appropriately.”

“What if it’s in between two people?” Willy shouts. 

“Spin again.”

“What if you can’t tell which of the two people it’s pointing at because they have no personal boundaries?” Richie snarks from across the circle with a sarcastic eyebrow raised at Willy and Latts, who already could not be sitting any closer together without one of them being in the other’s lap.

“You could just kiss us both,” Willy responds with what is probably meant to be a leer. Latts rolls his eyes and elbows him.

“How about you pick your favorite,” TJ laughs, “Play will go from Brooks around to his left. Anyone else have any questions or additions?”

“YES! Russian rule: you kiss, you do shot.” Ovi waves a matching bottle of Grey Goose (orange flavored this time).

“This is such a terrible idea,” Beags says, but he sounds a little in awe of the whole thing.

“If we have no further questions --” TJ looks around the circle “-- then, Brooks, it’s your turn!”

 

********

 

Brooks lands on Alzy for his first spin. Braden will admit (only internally) that he’s starting to understand why this is so entertaining. There’s something pretty ridiculous about a bunch of mostly-adult people playing a teenager’s game.

Willy lands on TJ. Apparently concerned about the “wimpy kisses get chirped” addendum, he gets a little carried away. Most of the group wolf whistles and cheers. Braden doesn’t, too busy watching Latts frown and pick at the label on his beer.

Latts is up and spinning before Willy’s sat back down. He lands on Schmidty and crawls across the circle, rather than meeting Schmidty halfway. Braden leans out of the way and keeps an eye on Willy instead. Willy’s laughing, but even across the circle in a partially dim room, Braden can see that it doesn’t reach his eyes. Those two are ridiculous, and they make his head hurt.

Then it’s Andre’s turn.

He’s been trying not to think about that since he sat down. 

He tries not to think about Andre most of the time, to be honest, but it doesn’t usually work. 

Andre’s spin lands on JoJo, who laughs and puckers up dramatically. Andre barely stops giggling long enough to kiss him. Braden lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding and pointedly ignores Carly side-eyeing him.

JoJo lands on Grubi and -- to no one’s surprise -- neither of them make a production out of it. 

Backy spins… and lands on Braden. Somehow he’s surprised, though he doesn’t know why. There are only so many people in this circle; he was never going to get out of this kiss-free. 

Backy kisses like he does everything else -- extremely competently and without a lot of flash. If Braden were into solid and blond, well… There are worse people in the world to have to kiss than Nicklas Backstrom. 

Like Alexander Ovechkin. 

He hasn’t even gotten seated yet after meeting Backy in the middle of the circle, hasn’t had time for his post-kiss shot that was Ovi’s own stupid rule. He goes to shout about people cheating, but he gets distracted by Andre (as, unfortunately, per usual). 

Andre’s not giggling any more, not whistling or chirping like the rest of the guys. He’s got his knees pulled up in front of him, arms wrapped around them tightly. The only part of his face that’s visible is his big brown eyes.

Anyone who has ever spent five minutes with Alexander Ovechkin knows that distraction is the fastest way to find something unexpected being done to you, whether it’s a bone-crunching hug, a shaving cream pie to the face, or something even less pleasant. In this case, it’s an overly-enthusiastic kiss. With tongue. Completely uncalled for.

Braden goes back to his seat bitching about cherry flavored vodka not tasting so great second-hand and does his two shots while fighting to ignore the feeling of someone’s eyes…. lingering.

Kuzy kisses Beags, Orly kisses Carly, and then Richie spins and lands smack in the middle of the mass of humanity that should separate out into Willy and Latts. The whole group explodes into hysterical laughter.

“Oh my god,” Carly wheezes, “what are the fucking odds!”

“C’mon, Richie, spinner’s choice,” TJ gets out between giggles.

In the pause between acknowledging TJ and looking at Willy and Latts, Richie does... _ something  _ with his face that Braden can’t quite explain, but suddenly everyone’s giggles are dying out. 

“Well guys, which one of you should it be?” It’s almost like a smirk, but just  _ more _ somehow. It also explains  _ so many _ rumors.

“Latts,” Willy replies immediately. “Definitely Latts.” He slides towards Brooks until he’s almost a normal person’s distance away. 

“Tom--”

“You know you want to, Mike, go on.” Willy’s looking at the floor, picking at a seam on his pants. 

Latts stares at him for an uncomfortable length of time before he sighs and shifts up onto his knees.

“Is it just me or has this taken a weird turn?” Braden whispers to Carly.

“Shhhh.”

There’s some cheering and whistling at this kiss (but not as much), and Latts is definitely blushing when he sits back down, now much closer to Andre than before. Braden isn’t the only one watching now; Backy looks downright concerned.

It’s Grubi’s turn next, poor guy. He lands on Kuzy, and immediately after, Schmidty lands on TJ. Their much-more-normal turns seem to have gotten everyone past the weirdness, which is good. However, that just means it’s Braden’s turn to spin.

The bottle spins fast at first, but as it slows, everything in the room seems to slow with it. Maybe it’s just his extra goalie focus, but as the bottle starts to make one of its last revolutions, he’s already mapping in his mind where it’s going to stop.

 

Oh god. 

 

Please no.

 

He would happily -- okay, maybe not ‘happily’ but without complaint, at least -- kiss everyone in the circle...except Andre. He can’t. He really, _ really _ can’t. He can’t know what that feels like and then go back to shoving everything he thinks, feels, and wants about Andre back into the steadily growing box in the back of his mind. If he has to kiss Andre, the lock is going to snap right off, and he doesn’t know how he’ll replace it.

He should have spun closer to himself; he can’t push the bottle further or stop it prematurely without everyone seeing him.

The bottle rocks gently to a stop.

He doesn’t have to look up to know where it’s landed.

“Yeah, Holts, show the kid how it’s done!” Schmidty whoops beside him, like he’s not basically a child himself.

Braden draws his eyes slowly up from the floor to see JoJo leaning over to whisper something to Andre, who blinks twice, deliberately, and uncoils up onto his knees.

“You gonna take that, Burkie?” Willy laughs.

A slow, almost evil grin spreads across Andre’s face. “We’ll see who is showing who,” he says before he drops his hands to the floor and  _ slinks _ across the circle like a very large, very predatory feline -- to the delight of most of his audience. 

Braden tries to move; fleeing seems like the least embarrassing option available to him at the moment. None of his muscles respond to his brain’s desperate screams to “run!” 

Rather than stop in front of him like he should, Andre crawls right into his lap. The rest of the team is losing their shit around them, but Braden’s having enough trouble remembering to breathe to join them. 

“What are you do--”

What he is doing is kissing the living daylights out of Braden, apparently. A detached, unemotional voice in the back of his mind says “where has he been getting the practice for this, he’s terrible at picking up”, like  _ now _ is a good time to be wondering about that.

Braden had always thought (in the brief moments before he stopped thinking about it) that Andre might be a little hesitant and shy doing this, but Andre’s confidence in his own skills clearly applies to other areas besides hockey.

A sharp poke in the kidney distracts him just enough from Andre sucking on his tongue that he can finally hear TJ talking in the background. “Yo, guys; seriously, it’s Carly’s turn. Break it up.”

He pulls away enough to turn and look at Carly, who is making no effort to hide his amusement. It’s hard to focus on what it’s Carly’s turn to do with Andre panting in his ear.

“Uhhh, what?”

Carly pokes at Andre this time, who squirms in Braden’s lap and bites at his earlobe. “I think you made your point, Burkie. Back to your spot, tiger.”

Braden doesn’t know if anyone else can hear Andre’s disagreeing noise, but it makes something in his gut seize up.

Andre drags himself oh-so-slowly from Braden’s lap, but instead of crawling back across the circle, he stands and ducks quickly around Braden towards the table of snacks set up at the other end of the room. And also one of the doors, but he refuses to look, just on principle.

A shot glass appears in front of his face. It’s hard to tell from Schmidty’s grin if he’s missed more conversation or not, but he’ll take the vodka.

Carly has spun by the time he’s finished that shot and is kissing Brooks when he tunes back in to the game. Alzy kisses Beags, and TJ kisses Orly. Andre slips back into his spot in the circle and shakes off JoJo’s attempt to talk to him. 

Beags lands on Ovi. Alexander Ovechkin has never known how not to be extra, so Beags gets dipped like the girl on the cover of a tacky romance novel. Once they’re seated again, TJ claps his hands to get everyone’s attention.

“Okay, wanna go around again?”

No, Braden does NOT want to go around again. Once was more than enough. He’s already kissed three more of his teammates than he ever intended to, and he’d quite like to go back to his room and freak out about one of them in private.

He appears to be the only dissident though, as everyone else is nodding along.

Brooks takes the bottle and spins again. He lands on Backy. Already, the cheers and chirping are less than they were the first round. Some of the novelty is gone now that everyone’s had a turn. 

However, some of the quietness could be due to the rising tension that spreads through the circle as Willy takes the bottle for his second turn. This is way more drama than Braden was prepared to deal with today.

Willy spins with more violence than is probably necessary, but this is a fairly common problem that wouldn’t draw any attention in regular circumstances. (These are hardly regular circumstances.) The bottle goes round and round and round, and just about the time even Braden is thinking about getting up to stop it, the bottle begins to slow. The last revolution around the circle takes approximately six weeks. Braden idly wonders if everyone else is hoping it doesn’t land on them too. He might get a little bit of a pass as a goalie, but he has a feeling the next person to kiss Willy is going to find themselves getting checked a little harder in practice for a while.

The bottle finally stops. 

Now everyone is holding their breath, because the bottle’s pointed right at Latts. 

No one moves. No one laughs, cheers, whistles; they’re all waiting for a reaction from someone else.

Well, most of them are waiting.

Andre’s not, but he’s been staring at Braden since he sat back down. He may not have blinked recently. He’s returned to his earlier position, knees up and one arm wrapped around them. The other’s balanced across the top of his knees. From here, Braden can’t see if he’s chewing on that finger like he does his gloves on the bench or not. It’s definitely in his mouth, to some degree, and Braden needs to pay attention to something else.

The few seconds that he’s let himself get distracted by Andre (again) are apparently all Latts can take of waiting for Willy to do something. He tackles Willy to the floor; Brooks barely dodges out of the way in time to avoid taking an elbow to the face. The sudden movement freezes everyone else even further, but when Willy rolls them both over to pin Latts to the floor, everyone jumps into movement together. 

“Okay, I think we’re done here,” TJ announces to the room at large. Several of the guys head for the snack table or the TV and video game console set up nearby. A few others leave the room talking about swimming pools and hot tubs, while TJ loiters awkwardly like he’s not sure how to break up the tangle of Willy and Latts without getting kicked.

Ovi solves that problem by dumping a bowl of ice water over them. (Braden doesn’t know where the ice water came from, but that’s something that happens a lot around Ovi. He doesn’t ask questions anymore.)

“If you gonna do that, go somewhere else,” Ovi says, shaking the last of the ice out of the bowl. “Some of us trying to play FIFA in here.”

Behind him, Backy is splitting his attention between the now-dripping Willy and Latts and JoJo interrogating Andre in Swedish in the other direction. Andre is paying absolutely no attention to him; he’s still watching Braden.

Discretion, Braden reminds himself, is the better part of valor; now would be a good time for him to go somewhere else too.

 

********

 

He refuses to get into an elevator with Willy and Latts. Not out loud, of course, but since they’re walking ahead of him towards the elevator bank, he stops to look at some of the local activity pamphlets left in the lobby to avoid being asked. He couldn’t be less interested in the options; what he  _ is _ interested in is not catching the next round of the resolved sexual tension.

The major problem with this plan is that it gives Andre enough time to escape from JoJo and Backy. 

The doors are  _ almost _ closed when half a body slides into the space and triggers the re-open sensor. Andre steps onto the elevator, stopping just inside the doors. He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t move any closer until the doors close all the way.

The elevator has just shifted into movement when Andre pounces, shoving him back into the wall with enough force to knock some of the air from his lungs. 

“Andre, I don’t think--”

“Good, then don’t.” Andre crowds in closer, pressing him back so the handrail digs into his back. “Just listen. You’ve been watching me a lot, Holts. You watch me, and then you frown and watch someone else. So I’m thinking, what do I do to Holts?”

“You--”

“Shh. What you don’t see, Holts, is I’m looking too. I’m just not frowning because I like to look at you.”

Braden inhales as best he can with 200 pounds of Swedish forward pinning him to a wall. He opens his mouth to reply just as the elevator jerks to a stop.

“C’mon,” Andre pulls him from the elevator with a hand tight around his wrist. “We’re not done.”

 

********

 

Andre knows exactly which room is his, which should maybe be creepy, but he’ll worry about that some other time -- or maybe never. Right now, he’s worrying about getting the keycard into the lock correctly and getting this door open before anyone else comes around the corner and sees them.

Inside, Andre pushes him away from the door and towards the bed.

“So why don’t you like to look at me, Holts?”

Braden detours from the bed towards the armchair in the corner. He might be crazy enough to let this conversation happen, but he’s not crazy enough to sit on a bed with Andre in the room. “I don’t not like to look at you.”

Andre certainly has less reservations; he kicks his sandals off and sprawls across Braden’s bed like he belongs there, like he’s got no plans to leave. “That doesn’t make sense.” He moves some pillows, wiggles around to get comfortable.

Braden digs his fingers into the armrests of his chair. “I don’t frown because I don’t like to look at you. I’m frowning at me, not at you.”

“So what’s wrong with you when you look at me?”

_ Everything _ is what he wants to say, but that probably won’t sound right.

Let’s be real, nothing is going to sound right in this current moment. Andre’s got expert-level bedroom eyes, like he already knows what Braden’s going to say, he’s just trying to make him say it out loud.

Fine then, if that’s how he wants it.

“What’s wrong with me,” he snaps, “is that I think about things I shouldn’t and I want things I can’t have.”

“Says who?”

Braden is fully prepared to answer that question - except he doesn’t actually know the answer, now that he thinks about it. 

“How about you tell me the things you’re thinking and wanting, and I’ll tell you if they’re okay.”

Braden promptly chokes on his own tongue.

“Or,” Andre says with a downright filthy chuckle, “we could just pick up where we left off downstairs, and you point out if I get anything wrong? You’ll have to come over here. We won’t both fit in that chair.”

Braden stands up so quickly the chair falls over. Andre doesn’t even bother trying to hide his laughter. 

He’s still giggling a bit when Braden climbs onto the bed, planting his hands on either side of his head and leaning in close. “Gonna show me how it’s done, Holts?”

Oh yes, yes he is.

 

********

 

“Holts isn't answering his phone.” Carly frowns and flips his own phone back and forth a few times on the table. “Where could he have disappeared to?”

TJ shrugs, not even looking up from his menu. “Didn’t he say something about a nap earlier?”

“I guess? It’s just weird.” He turns back to his own menu. It’s not like Holts can’t feed himself, after all, he just doesn’t usually ignore actual phone calls.

They’ve just ordered when Backy and JoJo wander in. He waves in their direction, and Backy steers JoJo, who’s busy texting, towards their table.

“Hey guys, what’s up?”

“We can’t find Burkie,” JoJo says to his phone screen.

“When did you see him last?”

“After the spin the bottle, he followed Holts to the elevators-- oh shit.” JoJo raises horrified eyes to look at the rest of them. “Where’s Holts?”

TJ snorts. “He’s not answering Carly’s phone calls.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Backy sighs. 

TJ doesn’t so much laugh as cackle. “I am a master matchmaker. I should get business cards.”

“Yeah, no.” Carly shakes his head. “We’ve had about as much of that as we can stand.”

Backy nods emphatically. “No more spin the bottle.”

“Fine, fine.” TJ grins. “How do you all feel about ‘Never have I ever’?”


End file.
